Albert Pierrepoint was not quite Britain's last hangman, but he was its most prolific (if that's the word for something so much the opposite of creativity), and most famous. It was the family business, after all. Timothy Spall gives a masterly performance as the ordinary, decent, rather dull man who was proud to do the extraordinary job, primarily because his father and uncle had done it before him. Whatever your opinion on capital punishment, and this film does not take a particular stand, it's hard not to admire Pierrepoint's craftsmanship and dedication to doing the job as humanely as possible.

With the opening of the film we're straight into the mechanics of the grim business, with Pierrepoint being shown the ropes, so to speak, and quickly achieving his expertise at the most efficient and quickest executions. His record was 7 seconds from cell to final breath, and it's disquieting to see his almost indecent sense of triumph when he achieves this. It's also alarming to discover that it's the hangman who takes complete charge of the execution process, all the way from the condemned cell to the rope, as if the shameful act is something the top brass don't want to dirty their hands with. The hangmen (for there is always an assistant) even take down, unclothe and wash the corpse afterwards. Never disrespectful, Pierrepoint achieves a kind of religious satisfaction in helping the condemned to what he sees as redemption through their paying the price.

But it's something to he keeps to himself and never discusses with his wife or reveals to the public, for whom he's a jolly bloke who does comic turns down the pub. Juliet Stevenson gives a strong, chilly performance as his wife in this odd marriage where the husband's constant taking of life is something not to be talked about or consoled over. But these two make it credible.

Everything changes however, when he becomes executioner to the Nuremberg Trials, and the hanging moves to production line quantities. There's a great over the top (surely?) cameo by Clive Francis as Montgomery, urging Pierrepoint to show the rest of the allies how good he is and, as it were, hang for England. On his return home he is identified by the press, and feted as hero by his neighbours.

The film goes beyond the depiction of the hanging process, though, to show an England moralistic but repressed, simplistic and timid, all shades of grey and brown, where entertainment is homemade, homes and pubs are colourless and proper, and passion and sex are, like execution, not to be spoken of, and done, if at all, in dark guilty corners. The stiff upper lip reigns. There's a middle aged look and sound to everyone - Spall and Stevenson never seem to age from the 1930s to the 1950s, but that's because they never look young.

Over the next few years he hangs many of the country's most notorious killers - and others. As the years pass and the prison gate protests grow he begins to quietly sicken of his trade, and the look he gives each victim as he places the awful hood over their heads in that last moment becomes less and less confident. But the clincher is a melodramatic and incredible turn of plot so contrived-seeming that I thought it must be a sentimental invention. After the film I discovered it was actually true. And in a strange way, although it was true, the effect of its treatment in the film was still to detract from the integrity of the rest and suddenly turn me cynical. How much more satisfying would it have been for Pierrepoint's final disillusionment to have arisen with, say, the realisation that he had hanged several innocent people, like Timothy Evans. Or even that the ostensible, rather absurdist reason which he actually gave was true - a protest at not being paid ‘cancellation fees' when there was a last minute reprieve. But as it is, to me the film seemed to have revealed a mushy heart, and perhaps that's why, though sincere and intense, with top quality performances, it never quite shook me as I felt it should.